Life With "Aware"or "Awaken"

Wei and Jin Dynasties Council volatile, the political situation was frequently changed, different kinds of ideas kept pouring, while fierce intrigue between noble and humble was continual. How to judge those scholars who live in that period? From the bright side:the life awareness and the aesthetic consciousness began to arise, the shining humanity came to publicized in society; on the dark side:people’s living condition became more hash and they also suffered from the spiritual abuse, the evilness of human nature was wide spread. Under these circumstance, some of the scholars chose to be frank, some chose to run scared. The variety of their living conditions directly or indirectly reflects those scholars’thoughts of life.As representatives from that period, Ruan Ji and Ji Kang, who were close friends and well known as spiritual leaders from "Zhulin Seven-Sage Association", clearly made their points against the bondage of feudal ethical and were regarded as warriors who fought against the Confucian ethical code and advocated for nature. They had similar thoughts on academic idea, life pursuitness, personality structure and life attitude. Hence, the academic community always considers their similarity rather than difference. However, Ruan Ji and Ji Kang had obvious difference in some areas, such as the feeling towards life and the way they dealt with political matters. Raveling out these differences will be positive for understanding their philosophical study.Starts from philosophy of life perspective, this paragraph analyze Ruan Ji and Ji Kang’s realm of life, life consciousness and political choices. The introduction part mainly talks about the background of this thesis:although their personal independence of conduct as well as their feudal opposition has been widely discussed, their family background and the source of their ideas which brought the diversity in their living philosophy didn’t mention as much.The first paragraph of the main body talks about Ruan Ji and Ji Kang’s pursuit towards the immortal and the hidden life. Based on their different understandings about Lao Zhuang Daoism,we can reveal the distinctions on their philosophical theories and the way they prove it, also, we can see they held different attitudes towards spiritual shackles, personality ideals and so on. Ruan ji’s ideal life can be shown in one of his paragraph named Mr Big Man Story, where his emotional feeling and experience are mainly used to express his thought about the society; while Ji Kang’s pursuit was presented in Mr Honda’s Story, it was more relied on his independent thinking and more sensible, and leads us to a moralizing spiritual shackles.Ruan ji and Ji kang’s life attitudes are analyzed in the second paragraph according to their choices with drug and wine. Ruan Ji was fond of drinking wine while Ji Kang preferred to the drug, which showed their diversity in the way they felt about life and how they felt about it. Ruan ji’s idea was more likely "being towards death" and Ji Kang was on the contrary.The third part explained the "hide" and "retreat" political choices. Based on the fact they came from different family and political background, they had also made different decisions when it came to the crucial points that related to their political life, Ruan used a refined way to expound the authority, Ji Kang, on the other hand, choose to fight against the authority in a firm way.Based on intensive reading and thorough history exploration, this thesis fully expound how their thoughts arise, the basic attitudes they held towards life and the choice they made in political field; points out the difference of their living philosophy and the reason, which will help us better understand the two ideologist’s difference. Will deepen the understanding of the difference between these two Wei and Jin Dynasties representative thinkers.